Kanye West, Yeezus, 6/18/13 (TBC because who knows anymore)

but anyway i'm saying it's not offensive full stop

there is plenty of questionable shit that i'm able to overlook/contextualize/ignore/etc but the trick is not tell people that they're wrong to be offended by it just because you can

not to tell people, I mean. Debating whether something is a little racist or a little homophobic or whatever is stupid. "I'd rather be a dick than a swallower" can obviously be read as homophobic and if it slides into your grey area than good for you, buy yourself a cookie.

unless you're actually arguing you like the song BECAUSE of that line, then by all means argue its merit. If you're saying you like Kanye or the track IN SPITE OF it, then let people say they don't like it for the obvious reasons there are to.

The line bothers me more now than it would've in 2004, I can tell you. Not enough to dismiss the song or performance.

I didn't even realize Kim K was Armenian. I just thought she was just one of those southern european olive-complected motherfuckers. She's definitely white but not "good white".

I did get into a conversation a while back tho about how differently the Kardashians would be percieved if they dated white men instead of black.

if kim got famous off a sex tape with aj mclean and was currently pregnant with eminem's child, I dunno if things would be all that different.

haha my first reaction was "wouldn't the better analogy be Aaron Carter rather than AJ"

I hate the way my brain works sometimes

that scenario would drastically change what The Soup says about them, at least

i think there's still a lot of anxiety about the black male / white female pairing, from both sides

now dan forced me to think of Kanye getting famous off a blowjob from Barbara Bush.

xposts i can deal with this stuff in music in general otherwise i wouldn't be able to enjoy basically any hip hop. i mean the "behind doors dick-takers" line in 'shooter' bothers me every time i hear it but its still a great song. what i have a problem with is seeing a song praised for 'raising important issues' or w/e and then having something like this glossed over.

s.clover, have you ever heard robin thicke's original "oh, shooter"? It's literally the same song except for no shitty lil wayne lines piped in the instrumental breaks. Highly recommended!

Thicke was one of my candidates for alternate universe "I hit it first" guy instead of AJ

that is the nicest thing anyone's ever said about ray j

"trying to get a piece of cake / take it off of your plate / eat it right in your face"

The problem with that lyric is no multiple mentions of "Hampton"

I love how righteous jord has been lately about addressing charlemagne the god's mister cee comments, or writers who still say 'pause,' and get a little confused why he's so much more forgiving of things like this kanye line or what a. banks said about a$ap. mostly because I really respect his pov on these things and want to understand it.

― my mans ray manzarek (some dude), Wednesday, May 22, 2013 4:12 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

well i just don't think the kanye line is homophobic, i really don't.

banks is a little different. i don't really agree with her "outing" asap rocky but i did think that the incredible backlash against her in that spat was partly sexist and partly because people just want her to go away. i was simply making a point that making gossip public is not a new thing in rap music and that she wouldn't have been pilloried for doing so had she been someone else.

i like how you've decided he's making a play on words but only using one of the two meanings

you see he's saying he's a dick, but it's better to be a dick than to just blindly accept society...he is not ALSO saying you shouldn't want to swallow semen no sir how could you think it!

it's a wry utilization of a common homophobic conceit, not an endorsement of it

i mean what would even be the context in the song of him "endorsing homophobia"

christ i thought you were a gawker writer not a gawker commenter

it's a stupid line but why is the swallower assumed to be a man here, that's sexist imo

christ i thought you were a gawker writer not a gawker commenter

― da croupier, Wednesday, May 22, 2013 6:55 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

well your argument makes no sense so i'm not even sure what to tell you

i don't believe you can't understand how anyone could take that to be, at the very least, a homophobic metaphor.

xpost kanye is saying HE would rather be a dick than a swallower, and kanye is a man

like if you want to argue that it's maybe a reckless metaphor because some people will take it as an endorsement of homophobia i would disagree but at least accept it. but i don't see how anyone can read that line and think there's two meanings to it or that kanye is endorsing homophobia.

kanye is saying it's bad to be a swallower - a phrase that has (at least) two meanings. one is being one who accepts the world as it is presented to them. one of those is being one who performs oral sex on men. To say this is not a homophobic metaphor would be to suggest that kanye is making a play on words but not meaning half the play.

you can say "oh he doesn't really mean it, he's just trying to be witty". But if someone else is more sensitive to the subject, don't be facetious about it and pretend that one has to actively be advocating homophobia in order to make a homophobic joke.

Lex otm about this way up the thread

totally, but i'm not debating whether it's offensive "full stop" or "actively" homophobic. It's totally in the zone where if someone says it's offensive and homophobic they're not wrong.

xpost kanye is saying HE would rather be a dick than a swallower, and kanye is a man

― da croupier, Wednesday, May 22, 2013 6:57 PM (21 minutes ago)

well another way of looking at it is he'd rather be a man than a woman (or submissive in some sense)

another way of looking at it is that he'd rather be dick van dyke than a sword swallower

i agree w/ you more or less

Lex otm re: it being an invocation of fucked up power relations during sex. He's using a really sexist/homophobic but common shorthand to get his idea across, but whether he meant it as an endorsement of homophobia/misogyny is kind of irrelevant to it still holding up a pretty fucked up way of thinking.

i think he's endorsing dick nixon's politics over those of contemporary conservative icon, Utah Attorney General John Swallow.

well your argument makes no sense so i'm not even sure what to tell you

― J0rdan S., Wednesday, May 22, 2013 3:56 PM (55 minutes ago)

this is fucking bonkers. kanye's basically saying that he'd rather be a aggressive boor than a faggot/woman/weakling. in order to accomplish this, he's chosen a word that suggests homosexuality, femininity and weakness. crucially, the word "swallower" only suggests weakness because it implies homosexuality and femininity. to pretend that the important, meaning-generating portion of the double entendre simply doesn't exist is absurd.

see there's black sheep, and there's tommy boy/ but i'd rather be little nicky than the waterboy

the waterboy was a good movie, dont hate

that is literally like top 5 one of my least favorite movies i've ever seen

just one more important controversy stirred up by kanye west's controversial new track

i guess you had to be in middle school, grandpa xp

to start hating it

i was in 11th grade when it came out, and throughout my senior year, that was the movie my classmates would wanna watch if the teacher let the class watch a movie. it was hell. and i mean, i was in middle school when Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore came out, and those movies made me question just how juvenile i thought i was.

kanye's basically saying that he'd rather be a aggressive boor than a faggot/woman/weakling.

jesus christ you're an idiot

okay i probably shouldn't have said that but that line has nothing to do with femininity or "weakness"

billy madison and happy Gilmore are both stone classics... the waterboy was on a level below

i mean he spells out 100% of the dick/swallower meaning in the line that precedes it

he's saying he'd rather be called a dick but be able to do what he wants than to be someone -- if you want to read it literally -- who is "swallowing" what the media or the government tells you (or "swallowing" culture)

the way i read it, the metaphor does not imply weakness via a link to femininity or homosexuality, but via a link to passivity

okay i probably shouldn't have said that but that line has nothing to do with femininity or "weakness"

without casting aspersions, shit yeah it does! to swallow, in the sexual context that KW is clearly invoking, is to be feminized, submissive and (not to put too fine a point on it) gay. i mean, come on: "swallower" is also equated with "followers" and even "slaves". it's hardly a stretch to say that followers are sometimes viewed as weak relative to their strong leaders, and this is a call to arms, after all. kanye's saying he's a leader, and a dick in more than one metaphorical sense, and that he's proud of this position relative to the followers who swallow what dicks (like him!) spout.

i mean, you can interpret the implied gay slur out if you want, but i see that as willful blindness to a fairly blatant suggestion.